Positively lethal
by NordicMia
Summary: And after hell broke loose at the Café Réplique, what then? A short one shot after Murder in Montparnasse, because I just couldn't resist.


**All new to this spectacular fandom, and amazed and humbled by the quality of the stories.** **Here is my first contribution to the fandom. It's a one shot between episodes, just after Murder in Montparnasse. I just couldn't resist. Please, let me know what you think, I'd love you forever. English is not my first language, so if you find too many random choices of prepositions and you can't stand it, volunteer to be my beta, not my English professor, whose red pen brings him/her catharsis. I've written very little in this glorious second language of mine, and would appreciate any feedback.**

 **Mia**

"Good night," Jack answers a beat too slow and steps out of the door. The night air cools the blush in his cheeks. Of course he'd blushed. He'd had no idea that the much travelled painting Rene Dubois had stolen had been of her. A nude her. Damn it! Why hadn't he asked, so he could have been prepared?

He shrugs and admits that it probably wouldn't have helped. And perhaps it wasn't the artist's choice to paint her naked that had made his blood rush to his face, but her pose. Her long legs, flat stomach, exposed breasts and arched neck. He'd seen it before. No, he'd dreamed it before, as clearly as if that bloody painting had been hanging on his bedroom wall for years, instead of hers.

He chuckles at the thought of what Rosie would have said if he'd come home from France in 1919 with that painting and suggested it would look nice in their bedroom. Would she have stopped talking to him even earlier?

He walks fast through the empty and dark streets of Melbourne and soon reaches the City South Police Station. The half asleep officer on duty in the front room looks surprised when Jack enters.

"Need to fill in a report," he mutters and closes the door to his office.

There is no report to fill in, and even if there were it could have waited until tomorrow. He is bone tired, but he cringes at the thought of going home. It's several weeks since Rosie moved out to live with her sister, but the house is still full of the things she's brought into it over the years. Things they need to sit down and discuss if their marriage eventually (at last!) will end in the divorce Jack caught sight of several years ago. Were they ever good together? Maybe in the beginning, but he can remember neither her nor himself from that time. Was it only the War that came between them? Only? The War took a young police constable into its ranks and dismissed a bitter, much older man devoid of most emotions except the utter surprise of being alive, years later.

Jack sighs. He pities Rosie. She tried, she really did. And he did, too, but it was as if they spoke different languages, and even the smallest of gestures of affection could be interpreted as the opposite. After the demobilisation he was promoted within the police force, and, just like it had been in France, duty called. He'd turned into a machine. The job, the duty, the enforcement of law and order as a senior member of the Victorian Police. His results were good, but it rarely brought him joy. He liked the symmetry of justice being done, though, and knew he made the streets of Melbourne a little safer.

And then she came along. The Honourable Miss Fisher. Phryne. Annoying as hell, sharp a razor and positively lethal. The first time they met, on the first crime scene she contaminated for him, she stirred him out of his self imposed persona of a doggedly, albeit somewhat bored, committed police officer with no other goals than justice. He wonders if every man with even a drop of warm blood in his veins has the same trouble focusing in her presence, as he does. Is it something in that exotic perfume? Some kind of narcotic? He shakes his head. Of course not. She is just… just unlike any woman he's ever met before. Ever imagined before. And despite the fact that he can't decipher her words if he watches her lips while she speaks, he finds himself banter back. It's as if she has awoken an unknown part of his mind, which can act and speak as if he is in as much control as she is.

The bell above the door in the front room tinkles, but the noise of drunken citizens in need of police assistance fails to fill the room. Jack leans back in his chair, well aware that no one knows he is here. He closes his eyes and considers sleeping in his office chair. He's done it before, and it isn't particularly comfortable, but still less unnerving than facing his drab and dusty home full of his wife's knick-knacks. There is nothing of him there. Here in his office he has the memory of that exotic, possibly narcotic, perfume. He can never conjure up that scent at home.

A tinkle other than the doorbell sounds. He wonders sleepily what it is and why it sounds so close, but the scent memory of that perfume is strong and warm. He can almost picture her, sitting on his desk, disregarding whatever evidence she crinkles, giving him a perfect view of those legs, sometimes in the shortest skirts in Melbourne.

"Jack?"

This is a nice dream. He sighs.

"Jack?"

Something nudges his thigh and reluctantly he opens his eyes.

She does sit on his desk, on a manila folder of statements from last week's bank robbery in South Warf, and her silk-clad knees are just in his field of vision.

He jerks upright in his chair, inhales what he concludes must be a vaporised variety of opium, and tries to find his bearings.

"Phryne? What are you doing here?"

"Can't you guess?"

"What? Um, no. It's the middle of the night, no, it's far past the middle of the night. I left your house hours ago. Has something happened?" He's blabbering to fill the admittedly small space between them, and is distantly amazed that his brain can communicate proper English words for his mouth to pronounce.

She holds up something silvery between her fingers.

"You forgot your car. The keys were on the table just inside my door."

"My…?" He shuts his mouth when he realises it won't make him appear clever, smart or even sane.

"Mhm. And since it's one of the station's car I guessed you, or someone else, might need it tomorrow."

The position below her, a position he normally likes with a slightly guilty pleasure, suddenly feels exposed and vulnerable, and he scrambles to his feet. It brings him uncomfortably close to her and that damned scent that makes his head spin, but at least he is taller and can look down at her.

"Thank you," he says and takes the keys from her fingers, as if it's perfectly normal for a single woman from Melbourne's upper class to deliver forgotten car keys to distracted police officers in the small hours of the night.

Part of him wishes her apparition and her delivery of keys are a dream, but suddenly he remembers clearly that he drove to Phryne's house from the Café Réplique in one of the station's cars. Damn. Damn that painting of his dreams and her cool composure and the late hour and his foggy mind.

"You kissed me," she says.

He remembers that. Clearly. At the time he'd just acted instinctively, not wanting her in Rene Dubois's line of sight and not reaching her with his voice.

"You froze," he answers. "I don't know the history between you and Dubois, but I've never seen you terrified like that before. I didn't want him to see you. I wish…"

She silences him with her fingers against his lips.

"You needn't have kissed me like that."

"Phryne, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to… What do you mean, like that?"

"Like this."

She closes the small gap between them. When her body presses up against his he feels calm and whole and steady. Her lips are warm and soft, and, thank God, silent for once. He calculates the odds of the situation being a dream. Not too far off one of his recurring dreams of those full, talkative, and soft lips, and decides to just go with the flow, dream or not. He cups the back of her neck and pushes his fingers in her silky, black hair. His other hand grips her around her waist to pull her even closer. She answers by opening her mouth and letting him taste her. He decides in an instant that she really is a dream, throws caution to the wind and drinks her like a man lost in the outback. His hand around her finds its way down to pull her leg to his hip and closer than before. He explores her lips and sharp teeth and battles with her tongue for domination. Her moans of pleasure and playful bites sober him up. Reluctantly he stops kissing her and creates enough space between the to be able to focus on her face. She looks back at him with hooded eyes, her eyes black rather than blue. She doesn't smirk. Damn it, she always smirks.

"Phryne…" he stalls, not at all sure this really is a dream.

She leans in to kiss him again and he can't resist tasting her again. Her taste is far more lethal than her perfume, he concludes. He pulls away.

"Phryne."

"Jack."

"I… I didn't kiss you like that," he stammers.

Now she smirks. Bugger, this is not a dream at all.

"No? My memory must fail me. Remind me."

His own memory of the kiss in the Café Réplique, an ill considered act perhaps, but the only one he could come up with at the time, is elusive now. Her lips had been still, and cooler than his own, and he remembers thinking 'This is not kissing her. This is getting her attention and out of harm's way. This is not kissing her because I have to keep focused, I'm on duty. Kissing her would be the last thing I'd do on duty.' And then she had kissed him back and he'd been off duty. For about three seconds, before his eyes snapped open because he'd said he'd keep an eye out for Dubois. He'd seen Constable Collins shocked face, but just about everything shocked Constable Collins, so he'd looked beyond him and seen the man whose very name seemed to intimidate Phryne into a shadow of herself. Dubois was dark and lean, like himself. Jack chanced a glance at Phryne when he let go of her, and flinched inwardly at the soft, calm and unguarded look in her eyes. And then hell broke loose. Why hadn't he been quicker? He'd had a clear shot of Dubois before the Frenchman had grabbed Phryne by the neck and put his gun against her face. Jack wished he'd shot Dubios just to escape the memory of her terrified expression.

"I don't remember either," he whispers. "Something like this?" He leans into her and kisses her like he's wanted to for months. Slowly and thoroughly and with all the time in the world. Her lips are warm now, and her body seems to fit his like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle.

His hand around her lifted knee acts on its own accord and finds the edge of her stocking. Her breath catches in her throat when his fingers touch her skin, and even though it's a sound he's never been able to evoke in Rosie he knows he must stop.

"Phryne, stop. Please."

"No."

"Yes."

He tears himself away. His action is half-hearted and she is still in his arms. He strokes her lips with his fingers, partly to stop her from kissing him again. He can't think when she kisses him.

"No," he says firmly.

"Whyever not?"

"Because I can't resist you."

She rolls her eyes.

"That's the whole point, Jack."

He doesn't answer and looks down at her beautiful features. He considers the slim possibility of this being one of his dreams, after all. She looks like she does in his dreams. Positively edible.

He takes her hands into his and kisses her fingertips, relishing in their softness against his lips.

"Phryne, I can't. I'm not trying to judge your way of life. I admire your independence, never mind what society would say, and perhaps do. But my middle class heart just isn't up to your modern way of life. I'd perish when you found someone a lot more interesting than a Detective Inspector to… to play with."

"Oh," she answers. Surprised? Disappointed?

"I do want you. I've been debating whether or not you are a dream ever since you came here. You can't imagine how much I want you. I want to… no. I've lived in a loveless marriage for almost a decade. It's coming to an end, as you might have concluded. I've invested my heart and all my imagination into the smallest tokens of affection. It hasn't worked out. I'm not ready for you. You are like a force of nature, and you would wipe me out completely by just looking at another man. And you do that. Frequently. Just the other week, when you'd almost been hit by a sand sack at the theatre, I really wanted to escort you home, I didn't want to let you out of my sight, and I was looking forward to seeing you safe and sound in St. Kilda and maybe have a night cap, but out of nowhere this Mr Lin waltzes you off to dinner. I was… well…

"Oh, Jack."

She leans into him and puts her head on his shoulder. It feels good and he hugs her close, trying not to let his hands wander.

"Now, let's get you home. It's almost dawn."

"I'll walk."

"You will not. I'll drive you. No one needs that car before 8 o'clock."

She follows him obediently out into the street and takes the passenger seat.

He can feel her watching him while he drives and even though he probably could have driven to her house blindfolded he keeps his eyes on the empty streets.

Her house is the only one with any lights on in the windows on the street. He pulls up outside the imposing residence.

"Good night, Phryne."

"Good night, Jack. I'm sorry."

Finally he faces her.

"Don't be. Just keep challenging me whenever our paths cross again. The circumstances will be horrendous, no doubt."

"No doubt."

He smiles at the mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Sleep well," he says.

"Want to come in for a night cap?"

It's a closed question. The only possible answers are 'yes' or 'no.' Still it's as difficult to answer as Fermat's last theorem from 1637.

"Constable Collins will need this car in four hours. I need to return it, and I can't trust that night cap to be over by then."

"Another time, then? Or is it a 'never'?"

"Don't be so dramatic, Phryne, 'never' is too strong a word. Another time, soon. Now, go inside before the car blocks the way for the milkman."

She gives him a dazzling smile, leans in to kiss him on his cheek and is gone in a fading cloud of possibly addictive scent. Positively lethal. Jack finds himself, once more, blushing when he leaves her street.

 **And a review, please?**


End file.
